Old Ale

Last weekend we successfully brewed our Old Ale. We did mess up a couple of small things like our post-boil volume was supposed to be about 5.5 gallons, but instead the boil was a little too rigorous and we finished at 5 gallons. Our efficiency was low, ~61%, but that is about normal for a beer with that high an original gravity. We also were able to almost completely drain the mash tun, so no complaints there. The gravity came in at 1.094 and will hopefully end up being about 9% alcohol. We are also trying a new strain of yeast, Wyeast 1968 London ESB yeast. This yeast is supposed to be very good with malty beers and is a very versitle yeast that is supposed to good in everything from low gravity bitters to English barley wines. The yeast is very flocculant which means that it will drop out to the bottom of the fermentor into a very tight yeast cake. It is so flocculant that people have had trouble getting some of their higher gravity beers to attenuate out because the yeast will floc out too early into the fermentation process and not fully finish eating all of the sugars. To combat this, I have been rousing the yeast twice a day. In the morning and evening when I change out the ice packs for the swamp cooler I will pick up the carboy and swirl the yeast around to make sure everything is back into suspension. Hopefully the beer will finish in the low 1020s so we can get above 9% alcohol.

Old Ales are an English style of ale that are dark, malty, and strong; the perfect winter warmer. We are brewing this one in the middle of the summer for our winter warmer that we are calling First Snow Ale. We are going to let the beer age and will not open the first bottle until it snows for the first time in Denver. Usually this is around Halloween time, so once the beer is bottled it should have at least 9 weeks of aging in the bottle to mellow out before the snow comes. We are taking next weekend off from brewing because of San Fransisco trip, but the week after that will be a Belgian Tripel, and then to finish out the brewing this summer we will make our Christmas Ale, a spiced Belgian strong ale.

Shark Week

Well, Shark Week is finally here, and sadly to say, we could not wait to until today to crack open the first Red Ale, but it is finally starting to turn into a decent beer. At first, it was sort of 'blah' in taste/aroma. But after aging for a while, the malt is starting to take over and we are viewing this as more of a malt foward beer instead of a hoppy red ale. Right now: Ultimate Air Jaws...good start to the week